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We can approach this through:
1. logic - more places to breed means more mosquitoes, right? I don't see how it can be any other way. Unless you are saying that there are always and unavoidably enough breeding places and the limiting factor is something else? (I don't believe this is the case.)

and 2. empirical analysis: studies, and looking at where mosquito-borne diseases have been prevalent historically. I think it's pretty clear that the places where these diseases have occurred have been wet - but that's just my feeling, and I'd welcome a proper analysis.

Perhaps we need to be a little more specific. By breeding grounds, I'm interpreting that as meaning somewhere the eggs can be laid, and the mosquitoes can hatch and grow to adulthood. Your GEM mosquito control is a "breeding ground" of sorts, but deliberately breaks the cycle. So I believe the GEM practice is a way of reducing the mosquito population, but almost any other breeding ground will increase them.

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Chriswaterguy

This is in continuation of previous reply.

• I have heard of a theory on this topic (limiting factors). It is known as LIMITS OF GROWTH by Club of Rome. Experts are of the opinion that this is accepted to be obsolete now. This theory is explained in relation to a wild environment where everything happens in the natural way and so the population of no species grow too much or too less than what is required for the harmonious co-existence of the collection of life forms there.

In the modern situation there is one life form which does not obey many of the rules & laws of nature. This is known as HUMANS. It manipulates things to its advantage. This is the root cause of all problems and disrupts the harmony essential for the peaceful co-existence.

• God has implemented different schemes to control the population of various species and also to maintain the quality of each population.

1. Death due to ageing is the foremost among those.
2. Another one is predators.
3. Diseases' (leading to death) is yet another.
4. Next one is regulating reproduction. Most of the animals and birds have limited reproductive cycles - annually two or one, or even less. Elephant reproduces once in several years. Its gestation period itself is about two (2) years and produces not more than one offspring at a time. Lion and tiger, even though reproduce once in few years only, gives rise to 3 or 4 cubs at a time. Cattle (cow, buffalo etc) have gestation of less than a year and very rarely only get more than one calf at a time. Mother cow become reproductive in a few months from then. Sheep, goat, dog, cat, squirrel etc have smaller gestation periods but usually produce multiple offspring almost once in an year. Rabbits, poultry etc have more than one reproductive cycle every year and each time produce multiple offspring. Rabbit's gestation period is only twenty eight (28) days and mother becomes reproductive in a few days. But as they are prey to several predators, their population never grow beyond limits.
5. In the case of humans several factors other than natural are actively present. Some of them are social, education & awareness, attractions like monitory/other incentives etc. In present society a pair of human beings takes 20-25 years for doubling. Where as in the case of mosquito the growth in 1 month itself is a phenomenal 5000-15000 %!!! Such a high rate of reproduction is provided to ensure the availability of a healthy and dynamic mosquito population every where even under adverse circumstances and environments and also to ensure that there will be no threat of extinction what so ever.

Since it is a very essential TOOL of God, as a safe guard against extinction of mosquitoes God have created large number of species of them with diverse qualities. Even though there are different opinions about their number, there is no doubt that it is well above 2000 (because The Encyclopedia Britanica said there are 2500 species of mosquitoes, the American Mosquito Control Association said 4000 and The Wikipedia said (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito#Evolution) 3500). Of late we find more species of mosquitoes acquiring vectorial abilities (eg. Aedes Albopictus in 2005-2006 in Reunion Island through mutation of chikungunya virus) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chikungunya#Epidemiology . This too is a safe guard against probable unavailability of vector/carrier mosquitoes - a futuristic plan of action of God Almighty!
But the very high rate of growth can result in its over population. It is to check this risk that the powerful limiting factors are introduced in their life cycle.

• Water is the first and foremost among them. Unavailability of water certainly terminates mosquito's life cycle. Hatching process of mosquito's egg will not get triggered unless & until it come in contact with water. Aqua contact is inevitable to progress it as well.
• Next limiting factor is predators.

Dragon fly is a very prominent one among the predators of mosquito. They catch flying mosquitoes & eat. It is an ancestral enemy of mosquito. What I mean to say is that during all the phases of mosquito's life cycle the dragon fly is a predator. (Dragon fly also lay egg in water. Its offspring - NYMPH - lives several months in water and feeds on mosquito larva. Every day each nymph eats dozens of wrigglers.
Another predator is fish. In the pre-insecticide period fish was a very prominent mosquito control tool. With the advent of DDT they were pushed to the back stage.
In India itself there are dozens of fish species that had been utilised for this purpose. There was very clear idea about the qualities these fishes had to have. Some of them are:
robustness/ruggedness, easily portable, fast multiplying, no food value for humans, small enough to reach narrow spaces to follow & catch wrigglers, surface feeders to ensure proximity to wrigglers, so on and so forth.
They fall prey to spiders & lizards also.
Sparrows are also reported to feed occassionally on them.
Water being bounded always, limits their freedom of movement (in contrast to their adult phase) and make them easy prey to fish & nymph.

• Another limiting factor is their own feeding. Females of them feed on warm blooded creatures including humans. The feeding process causes itching to the victim and may end up in the premature death of that mosquito by the angry reaction of the prey.
• Yet another limiting factor is the dependence of growth duration on environmental temperature. The life span in water that takes only one week in hot climate can get extended to three weeks (300%) in cold climate.

In snow covered regions like Alaska (the 50th state of USA), they get hardly two months to live and reproduce. This is because during those months only, water (generated by melting of snow/ice due to sun shine) will be available to hatch their eggs and complete their larva & pupa phases.

• It is in spite of all these limiting factors that the mosquito menace keeps growing from bad to worse year after year and throwing human life from frying pan to fire.

We have succeeded in capturing the outer space, landing on moon, so on & so forth. Now a days affordable people are choosing moon/outer space as their tourist destinations. But alas, we are miserably failing in capturing this tiny little insect. At this point of time I am reminded of 4 things: a proverb, two jokes & a parable. I reserve them for future.

 As promised earlier I am uploading the graph of malaria data of Keralam.  

*The upload got discarded! Response was You must join a group for uploading a picture. The link provided took me to an empty space! What to do now?

As we see from the graph, there was a decade long effort to combat the exponential rise of 1970's. I find a few reasons for the failure of those.

• The inefficiency or lethargy of the feed back system gave sufficient time for the problem to grow high.
• The weapon (DDT) used in the earlier attack had lost its striking power since mosquito had developed resistance against DDT by that time.
• Probably there would not have been liberal cash flow as in the case of previous occassion.
• Even though the graph show high rise, till 1970 the total annual # of cases were less than a megere 500 and so its quite likely that the implementing agency would have handled the situation very lightly! This could be the reason why the toll could not be brought below even 50%.
• Another reason can be the smallness of the absolute number of cases. It was only 6000 in a population of 25,000,000 and it was brought down to 3000 (ie 0.024% brought down to 0.012%). Achieving figures below that may be like 6-zigma goal. I don't say it is unachievable, because such a goal was achieved in the previous project. As I mentioned earlier in this comment, the implementing agencies would not have felt the need for that.
• The almost vertical rise of graph (ascending like a rocket) after 1986 (which marks the end of second project) and the almost horizontal progress (ascending like an air craft) of it during 1964-72 tells us about the loss of efficacy of DDT in destroying mosquitoes.
• A google alert mail to me last week on mosquito control news says that residual DDT spraying is started in xxx country (I forgot the name. After all name of the country is immaterial in this case. Which ever is the country, our fellow human beings only are going to suffer the ill effects of that!). You must be remembering that the WHO had banned the use of DDT some 3 decades ago telling that its use is harmful to animal & bird life forms. In 2007 they lifted the ban. Then I tried to make it an issue, but it didn't catch up. What an individual like me can do other than shout in wilderness to be unheard?

Now I have a question: Has the WHO or anybody for that matter improved the DDT and made it safe/harmless to humans atleast????? Has anbody tried to confirn that DDT can still destroy mosquito as well as remain harmless to other life forms? If not what is the credibility of the WHO? ULTIMATELY WHICH DECISION OF THE WHO IS THE RIGHT ONE - THE BAN ON DDT OR LIFTING OF THE BAN ON DDT?